Unable to install pfsense on APU.3C4 with MSata

darkred

Dear all
In the last years I installed and used a few pfsense-installations on Alix-Boards, later on APU-Boards and now I tried an APU2 board - or in detail an APU.3C4 Board with MSata Storage. I used from the pfsense website the AMD64 for USB Memstick with Serial console from different download mirrors. I also used different USB Sticks (Kingston, SanDisk, Verbatime, etc.) and had every time the same problem.
The APU starts, recognize the USB Stick with the installer, starts the installation Process and aboard with following Message:

ada0 at ahcich0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
ada0: <SATA SSD SBFM01.2> ACS-4 ATA SATA 3.x device
ada0: Serial Number A45A0794128600681071
ada0: 600.000MB/s transfers (SATA 3.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
ada0: Command Queueing enabled
ada0: 28626MB (58626288 512 byte sectors)
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus2 target 0 lun 0
da0: <SMI USB DISK 1100> Removable Direct Access SCSI device
da0: Serial Number AA04012700010060
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 956MB (1957888 512 byte sectors)
da0: quirks=0x3<NO_SYNC_CACHE,NO_6_BYTE>
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ufs/FreeBSD_Install [ro,noatime]...
/etc/rc: WARNINGrandom: unblocking device.

Anyone have an idea what I can do to install pfesense on the APU Board?
Thank you!
Kind regards

bouke

@darkred The stock BIOS is too low/old. First upgrade to a higher version and verify if this resolves the issue. Cheers.

stephenw10

Looks more like you're using the wrong installer image. There is no error shown there, that's the last thing you will see on both consoles. Make sure you are using the serial console memstick image.
If you have wrong baud rate selected I would expect it to stop showing any output earlier but be sure to use 115200bps.

Steve

darkred

@darkred said in Unable to install pfsense on APU.3C4 with MSata:

APU.3C4

Hi @bouke
Thank you very much for your support.
I had an old firmware isntalled und updated to apu3_v4.9.0.7.rom. The update was successfull but I still have the same problem.

ada0: Serial Number A45A0794128600681071
ada0: 600.000MB/s transfers (SATA 3.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
ada0: Command Queueing enabled
ada0: 28626MB (58626288 512 byte sectors)
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus2 target 0 lun 0
da0: <General USB Flash Disk 1.00> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: Serial Number 05202500000011C0
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 3824MB (7831552 512 byte sectors)
da0: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ufs/FreeBSD_Install [ro,noatime]...
/etc/rc: WARNINGrandom: unblocking device.

What can I do?
Best Regards

bouke

@darkred Are you trying to boot from a USB thumb drive? It looks like it's having issues loading from there.

If you are on Windows: could you try Rufus to copy the install image again? Please use the one for serial. Try to download it from another mirror too. I once downloaded an incomplete image for some reason. After downloading a fresh install image from another mirror it worked.

You might also want to try another USB thumb drive if this problem persists.

stephenw10

Yup. You said you used the serial image but what you're seeing is exactly what I expect if you use an image for the wrong console type.
Use this: https://nyifiles.pfsense.org/mirror/downloads/pfSense-CE-memstick-serial-2.4.4-RELEASE-p3-amd64.img.gz

I also recommend using Etcher to write the image. It can write the .gz file directly extracting it as it goes which eliminates one more thing that can go wrong. I've yet to see it fail in any OS.

Steve

darkred

Thank you so much for your help.

@bouke and @stephenw10 :
I try to boot from an USB Memory stick. I tried different Memorysticks (Kingston, SanDisk, Verbatime, etc.). And yes, I work with Windows and tried Rufus, Win32 Disk Imager and Etcher. I selected the Serial-Image and retried it again with the link posted from @bouke. If I try to use the USB sticks with my older ALIX-Boards - it works fine.

But: The comment concerning console settings gave me an idea. The settings 115200 and 8n1 were correct. But I noticed that the error always occurs exactly after 32 seconds. So I tried to connect the cable to the console cable only after 35 seconds - and see there, the installation continues...????? Does that make any sense?

But no2:
I can't perform the installation cleanly, because my typed characters on the keyboard don't arrive in the putty or arrive wrong - despite UTF8 and VT100+...
Today I will try another notebook or even an old one with RS232 to do without my USB serial adapter.

darkred

I don't understand why, but I actually managed. As described in the last post, I wait about 35 seconds - then connect the console and see how the installation starts. Since the keyboard doesn't work correctly (I don't know why - I tested different USB drivers for the adapter) I simply took over all default settings (enter) and finished the installation.
After the reboot I could activate SSH and connect directly over the IP. This is how it works....
If someone has a hint why the keyboard doesn't transmit the characters correctly - I'm happy to do tests. It's interesting that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If I type "asdf" one comes sometimes "asdf", sometimes "Asdf", sometimes "asDf" and sometimes "as[control mark]"....
Thank you very much for your help!

bouke

@darkred I am using a keyspan USB to serial adapter. This works fine as long as I am using a quality serial cable. Some cables work and some are very flaky with results you described. So, it could be the serial cable.

stephenw10

Mmm, sounds like a bad connection there somewhere. Glad you were able to install though.

Steve